Fertility in women with BRCA mutations: a case-control study

Objective To investigate whether or not fertility is reduced in women carrying mutations in the BRCA genes ( BRCA1 and BRCA2 ), compared with noncarrier family members. Design Matched case-control study. Setting Academic. Patient(s) A total of 2,254 BRCA carriers and 764 noncarrier controls who were...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Fertility and sterility 2010-04, Vol.93 (6), p.1805-1808
Main Authors: Pal, Tuya, M.D, Keefe, David, M.D, Sun, Ping, Ph.D, Narod, Steven A., M.D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
BRCA1
BRCA2
Case-Control Studies
Contraceptives, Oral - therapeutic use
Female
fertility
Fertility - genetics
Fertility - physiology
Genes, BRCA1
Genes, BRCA2
Heterozygote
Humans
infertility
Internal Medicine
Mutation - physiology
Obstetrics and Gynecology
Parity
Pregnancy
Reproductive History
telomeres
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Objective To investigate whether or not fertility is reduced in women carrying mutations in the BRCA genes ( BRCA1 and BRCA2 ), compared with noncarrier family members. Design Matched case-control study. Setting Academic. Patient(s) A total of 2,254 BRCA carriers and 764 noncarrier controls who were from the same families as the carriers, but tested negative for the BRCA mutation. Intervention(s) None. Main Outcome Measure(s) History of fertility problems (yes/no) and prior use of fertility medications (yes/no) in cases and controls, obtained through administered questionnaire. Result(s) There was no difference in mean parity between carriers (1.9) and noncarriers (1.9). Conclusion(s) This study, which is the first epidemiologic study to specifically investigate the effect of carrying a BRCA mutation on parity and fertility, suggests that there is likely little or no effect of the BRCA gene mutation on fertility. To our knowledge previous epidemiologic studies have not investigated the effect of carrying a BRCA mutation on parity or fertility. However, we expect that if fertility differences exist, they would be toward the limits of reproductive life, thus larger studies with age-stratified analyses are needed to definitively answer this question.
ISSN:0015-0282
1556-5653
DOI:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2008.12.052